Unfortunately, settling into a new country is challenging when you have to tear down American stereotypes that have attached themselves to your appearance. When judged by my appearance, I believe I’m something along the lines of wealthy, opportunist, flaky, naïve and into partying. I don’t know how many people realize that America is in a recession, most people are drowning in college debt and the standard of living is too high for the wages that one receives. The most expensive thing I have EVER owned has been my computer and I was only able to travel because I have a useful skill, saved up some money, and put my college loans on hold.
When you meet people from western countries, they seem to be one of two extremes: they’ve worked hard and saved up money to be here or they’re living off their parents’ wealth and are just floating around. Of course there are the students, humanitarians and capitalists in there somewhere as well. But I’ve had a few experiences of meeting Westerners where I was very turned off by their attitude towards me as if they were trying to group me into one of the extremes. They seemed suspicious of me and used that as an excuse to be condescending.
“Oh, you studied in Chile? I’m headed there next. I’m intimidated by the Spanish… I hear it’s a lot faster.” I said to a girl from the States who had been living in Lima for about 5 years. She stared at me blankly as if she had no conception of the widespread view of Chilean Spanish. Even among South Americans it is notorious for being botched up and having a whole realm of idioms and words that exist nowhere else. It would be like a person not acknowledging that Irish is sometimes difficult for even English speakers to understand or that American English is different from British English. She then replied, “Well ANYWHERE you go you have to just learn the idioms and local dialect. I studied in Chile for about a month before I went to Argentina, and I’d say they’re just different. ”
The other strange thing about being western is that most times, in fact, you do come from a higher standard of living and find yourself easily in circles of the upper middle class, or even the wealthy class, because these are the people who either know English or want to know English. Therefore, if I’m teaching English, I’ll probably meet wealthy people. It’s strange to feel the class difference and sometimes I have these kind of Great Gatsby moments of being around people who have a maid, drive an expensive car, own a blackberry, and the art on their walls makes me feel like I’m in a gallery or a museum.
“You graduated about 4 or 5 years ago. What have you been doing since then?” said my interviewer for a business school, sitting behind a desk with my resume right in front of him. I looked at him curiously and casually pointed to the place entitled “work experience”. “I’ve been teaching English for 2 ½ years at the New England School of English.” I replied.
“Oh, right right, sure.”
He and his partner soon told me how they only hire people who already have a work visa. They explained how many institutes start the paperwork for your work visa, but everything is basically done under the table, and that they can basically fire you whenever they want because nothing is actually legal. Getting a work visa is actually more involved and when you stop working you have to leave the country.
Did they think they were doing me a favor or was this some sort of hazing?
I’ve gotten the impression that the competition between English institutes and schools is very high. English is in high demand and teachers basically have their pick of all kinds of opportunities. I emailed someone about an apartment and he emailed back, “The apartment is taken, but I’ve been wanting to learn English! Can you teach me three times a week? How much do you charge?”
Also, the people who I’ve interviewed with have been quite nosey. “You’ve interviewed somewhere else? What’s the name? How much did they say they’d pay you?” Or, when my employer found out I was from the New England School of English (recently rated one of the top English schools on the East Coast, if not the USA) he questioned, “What kind of teachers do they hire? What’s their curriculum? How do they get good teachers?”
Throughout my whole experience in South America, about 90% of people have gone above and beyond my expectations of being kind, hospitable and overall just friendly and fantastic. On the way to Machu Picchu I met a woman from Santiago who gave me her email and invited me to her birthday party when I got here! It was wonderful. However, there is of course, that 10% that either rub me the wrong way or have outright offended me. The other day I had a little stumble when I was about to rent an apartment.
I was excited about the place and had told the woman the day before that I would take it. It was clean, quiet, and the rooms were very peaceful and comfortable. There were gardens outside and even hammocks! She was very organized and told me that there was no drinking or smoking allowed in the house. Although wine is one of the reasons I came to Chile, I liked the look of the place so much that I figured it would probably save me some money. It would definitely be a challenge, but I figured I could go to a friend’s house or go out for drinks.
The next day I went back ready to pay for the month. A woman who does the administration had come to talk to me about all of the rules of the contract. This time, I got to hear them in English and discovered that in fact, I’m not allowed to have ANY friends in my room. She kept saying how the house was a place of rest and it was important that it be a home for the people who live there. I’m all in favor of no partying, but to not be able to have even just one friend come over? And even more, not be able to share a bottle wine? Suddenly I felt the retaliation of my gut saying, “NO WAY.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t act fast enough. I contemplated these rule as I was signing the documents, this was my own mistake. Perhaps it’s because I’m a flaky American. It wasn’t until I looked into my wallet to hand over the payment that I realized that I couldn’t. Community is too big a part of my life; I can’t live in a place that suppresses that. Was this a convent?
Well, when I explained that I didn’t want it after all, I set off a whole storm of Spanish between both the owner and the administrative lady. The administrative lady had already spoken down to me in English, explaining the rules as if I were a child. But once she realized her time was for nothing, suddenly she felt the need to tell me,
“This isn’t like America! This house is a safe place. That is IMPORTANT. You need to understand this. This isn’t America! This is a good place and you will not find this kind of security. This is not America!”
She kept reiterating that this wasn’t America, even stating,
“I know! I lived there for 5 years.”
To which I now, beginning to boil under my skin, shot back,
“I KNOW this is not AMERICA. I’ve lived there my ENTIRE LIFE.”
I wish I could have spouted off to her in Spanish, but it just wasn’t possible. I felt like she saw me as careless, flaky and looking for a place to party (party of 2?). I was beginning to think that the place was actually a cult or a convent, especially when they demanded that I erase all the pictures I had taken of it from my camera. She also demanded a copy of my passport, for some kind of security reasons and was saying,
“You can’t just come in and take pictures. This is someone’s home. This is a safe place.”
By the time I left the gate, I wasn’t sure what I was leaving. I really thought the landlord was about to give the people Kool Aid in there. Needless to say, I was trying to find a liquor store the whole way home. I’m definitely glad I didn’t sign that contract.
Being an English speaking Gringa goes both ways. Sometimes I find myself with the wealthy upper class, embraced with open arms, and other times I’m looked as suspiciously and assumed to be very careless. At this point, I am only in my initial stages of getting to know Santiago, so I just have to take these experiences in stride. Supposedly “Gringa” (feminine) refers to the fact that I’m foreign or have an accent. According to Wikipedia, the term came about during the Mexican war when the Irish would sing some old song that was like, “Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!” which the Mexicans began interpreting as “Greigo” which later became “Gringo”. It also says that Americans, specifically, can be referred to as this because Latin Americans don’t want to call us “Americans” and the other option would be “United Statesians” which is awkward in English (and we don’t use it anyway).
Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!
“Oh, right right, sure.”
He and his partner soon told me how they only hire people who already have a work visa. They explained how many institutes start the paperwork for your work visa, but everything is basically done under the table, and that they can basically fire you whenever they want because nothing is actually legal. Getting a work visa is actually more involved and when you stop working you have to leave the country.
Did they think they were doing me a favor or was this some sort of hazing?
I’ve gotten the impression that the competition between English institutes and schools is very high. English is in high demand and teachers basically have their pick of all kinds of opportunities. I emailed someone about an apartment and he emailed back, “The apartment is taken, but I’ve been wanting to learn English! Can you teach me three times a week? How much do you charge?”
Also, the people who I’ve interviewed with have been quite nosey. “You’ve interviewed somewhere else? What’s the name? How much did they say they’d pay you?” Or, when my employer found out I was from the New England School of English (recently rated one of the top English schools on the East Coast, if not the USA) he questioned, “What kind of teachers do they hire? What’s their curriculum? How do they get good teachers?”
Throughout my whole experience in South America, about 90% of people have gone above and beyond my expectations of being kind, hospitable and overall just friendly and fantastic. On the way to Machu Picchu I met a woman from Santiago who gave me her email and invited me to her birthday party when I got here! It was wonderful. However, there is of course, that 10% that either rub me the wrong way or have outright offended me. The other day I had a little stumble when I was about to rent an apartment.
I was excited about the place and had told the woman the day before that I would take it. It was clean, quiet, and the rooms were very peaceful and comfortable. There were gardens outside and even hammocks! She was very organized and told me that there was no drinking or smoking allowed in the house. Although wine is one of the reasons I came to Chile, I liked the look of the place so much that I figured it would probably save me some money. It would definitely be a challenge, but I figured I could go to a friend’s house or go out for drinks.
The next day I went back ready to pay for the month. A woman who does the administration had come to talk to me about all of the rules of the contract. This time, I got to hear them in English and discovered that in fact, I’m not allowed to have ANY friends in my room. She kept saying how the house was a place of rest and it was important that it be a home for the people who live there. I’m all in favor of no partying, but to not be able to have even just one friend come over? And even more, not be able to share a bottle wine? Suddenly I felt the retaliation of my gut saying, “NO WAY.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t act fast enough. I contemplated these rule as I was signing the documents, this was my own mistake. Perhaps it’s because I’m a flaky American. It wasn’t until I looked into my wallet to hand over the payment that I realized that I couldn’t. Community is too big a part of my life; I can’t live in a place that suppresses that. Was this a convent?
Well, when I explained that I didn’t want it after all, I set off a whole storm of Spanish between both the owner and the administrative lady. The administrative lady had already spoken down to me in English, explaining the rules as if I were a child. But once she realized her time was for nothing, suddenly she felt the need to tell me,
“This isn’t like America! This house is a safe place. That is IMPORTANT. You need to understand this. This isn’t America! This is a good place and you will not find this kind of security. This is not America!”
She kept reiterating that this wasn’t America, even stating,
“I know! I lived there for 5 years.”
To which I now, beginning to boil under my skin, shot back,
“I KNOW this is not AMERICA. I’ve lived there my ENTIRE LIFE.”
I wish I could have spouted off to her in Spanish, but it just wasn’t possible. I felt like she saw me as careless, flaky and looking for a place to party (party of 2?). I was beginning to think that the place was actually a cult or a convent, especially when they demanded that I erase all the pictures I had taken of it from my camera. She also demanded a copy of my passport, for some kind of security reasons and was saying,
“You can’t just come in and take pictures. This is someone’s home. This is a safe place.”
By the time I left the gate, I wasn’t sure what I was leaving. I really thought the landlord was about to give the people Kool Aid in there. Needless to say, I was trying to find a liquor store the whole way home. I’m definitely glad I didn’t sign that contract.
Being an English speaking Gringa goes both ways. Sometimes I find myself with the wealthy upper class, embraced with open arms, and other times I’m looked as suspiciously and assumed to be very careless. At this point, I am only in my initial stages of getting to know Santiago, so I just have to take these experiences in stride. Supposedly “Gringa” (feminine) refers to the fact that I’m foreign or have an accent. According to Wikipedia, the term came about during the Mexican war when the Irish would sing some old song that was like, “Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!” which the Mexicans began interpreting as “Greigo” which later became “Gringo”. It also says that Americans, specifically, can be referred to as this because Latin Americans don’t want to call us “Americans” and the other option would be “United Statesians” which is awkward in English (and we don’t use it anyway).
Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!
its the same in Brazil. If you are foreign is called like "gringa" Almost of surfers use this word. (Andrew MOntone)
ReplyDeleteAnother theory is that that the Mexicans shouted "Green go home!" during the war. Apparently we were the green side? Meh. I probably got that one of wikipedia too...
ReplyDelete